The helpfulness of physiological experiments to the general practitioner / by James Mackenzie.

  • Mackenzie, Sir James, (1853-1925)
Date:
[1910]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The helpfulness of physiological experiments to the general practitioner / by James Mackenzie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    PHYSIOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTS j applied the methods evolved by physiologists in their experiments on animals, ,modifying them to suit my purpose. I was thus aide to get the vessels and the heart to record their own movements. When I at- tempted to analyse and to understand the meaning of the movements that had thus been registered I failed completely until I had recourse to the study of the physiological experiments in which the move- ments of the heart, and the alterations of the pressure within the heart chambers, had been recorded. For this purpose I studied the experimental work of Marey, Chaveau, Roy, Porter, Frey, and others. In this way I was able to understand the somewhat complicated series of waves that appeared in the jugular pulse. The knowledge of the venous pulse thus obtained I applied to the interpretation of the irregularities in the heart’s action. I found that heart irregularity is very common not only in pregnancy but in many conditions of life from youth to old age. I also found that there were many forms of irregularity, some of which were of grave significance, while others were of very slight significance. I was enabled to separate and recognise the meaning of a certain number of these irregularities, but my knowledge of their manner of production was too limited to enable me to carry the matter beyond a certain stage. At the time I was carrying out these observations others were work- ing independently at the same subject. Thus Pro- fessor Cusliny had been producing, experimentally in dogs, different forms of irregularity, and had called attention to the fact that identical forms of irregu- larity could be recognised in the human subject. When I applied the explanation given by Cusliny of his experiments to my own observations, 1 was greatly